Hi everyone, Because so many of you kindly posted on this list and
privately to me concerning getting Linux on my Thinkpad, I figured I
would update you all on what has happened in case it saves some of you
the trouble and annoyance I have been experiencing lately.<smile> I'm
sure those of you more knowledgeable than myself on this may have been
able to resolve it better and quicker, but I'm still learning, as you
will soon see.<smile>
My machine came with a 120 gigabyte hard drive with a 30 gigabyte
rescue partition containing the computer's recovery files, the other
partition was taken up by Windows XP and various Thinkpad and Windows
applications.
First, I tried to hook up the docking station and install Fedora
using the docking station's serial port to have Speakup talk for me.
Speakup could not be found when I specified my Dectalk express as the
synthesizer, whether I specified a tty port by naming it specifically as
suggested by Janina or by having Speakup find it without specifying the
tty port. Consequently, in order to do my class assignments, I decided
to have my instructor assist me in installing Fedora and together we
got Gnome and Orca up and running.
When we tried to install Windows XP to set up the dual boot system,
my XP disk kept hanging at the hardware inspection portion of the
installation. Believe me, if I didn't need this laptop for school which
requires Windows and Linux, I would just keep a Linux system!!<smile>
Lenovo tech support said on its web site to turn off the dual core
processor support in the bios temporarily to allow Windows XP to install
properly. I had a friend assist me and we turned off the dual core as
directed. We still couldn't install XP, same problem, XP hanging at the
hardware inspection process.
Just for grins, a fellow geek friend who agreed to help me disabled
just about everything in the bios, just to get XP running, no go with
that either, same problem. She tried a Windows 2000 disk, just to see
if she could see my Linux partition, and voila! Windows 2000 at least
figured out that Linux lived on my system and found the rescue
partition. She nuked those partitions for me, and we are starting from
scratch!! It seems that Linux and grub will see my Windows partition if
I install Windows *before* Windows, but Windows XP gets cranky and won't
see my Linux partition if I install Linux first and then try to install
Windows afterwards. I realize that this sounds strange, so let me
clarify. Since there were only two partitions, I had to break the
larger one to install Linux and the one for the rescue partition wasn't
big enough for Fedora with all of the other applications and data in the
rescue partition. I didn't have access to something like partition
magic to rebuild the partitions, so we had to take this crazy route
instead. This appears to be what happens at school with all of the dual
boot systems where XP and Fedora 6 are involved, Windows seems to be
happy being installed first, then Linux and grub set up the dual boot
properly. XP is now on my machine, and I am going to try again to
install Linux.
Word to the wise, if you have a Thinkpad, the serial port appears to
be disabled by default in the bios. We turned it on, and now I'm going
to try
again and see how it goes. I'll keep you posted, unfortunately this
thing isn't over yet.<smile>
Thanks for listening,
Beth
